04 January 2007

Road Trip!

So this past weekend I decided to road trip to St. Louis to visit friends from all over the globe congregating in the Gateway City for the 2006 Urbana Missions Conference. I got up early on Saturday and drove to Lafayette to pick up my lovely traveling companion, Ms. Jonell Smith. Then we drove 250 miles to STL, arriving at about 11:30 local time and starting out on our quest to meet up with the uber cool Ms. Jillian McDonald. Hilarity ensued. :-)

Anyway... here's some pictures. This first building is the world famous Broadway Oyster Bar, a blues bar and Cajun restaurant on Broadway Street just off downtown. It is one of my favorite places to eat in the world, the food is great, just spicy enough, and they have whole crawfish crawling all over everything. Tres Magnifique!

Here I am, confronting the crustacean that succumbed to the heat of the Oyster Bar's delicious Jambalaya. It may look like I'm a little put off or scared, but I assure you, it's just excellent acting. The crawfish really ought to be up for an Oscar, and I'm not bad either.

Don't they say something about, why send a man to do a woman's job? Well, enter Jillian, who, in contrast to my fear and cowardice, faced the crawfish with excitement and even.... jubilation? Hmmm. Anyway, I couldn't eat the thing, but Jill didn't seem to have any problem, and before you could blink... it was no more.

After lunch on Broadway we made our way over to the new Busch stadium, it was the first time I had been to STL since they finished construction... and let me tell you, it is pret-tay. Here Jill and I pose with the voice of the Cardinals, the timeless Jack Buck.... Go crazy folks! Go crazy!

And finally here we all are, standing like a Broadway Chorus in front of the new Busch. Grade A awesome, in my personal opinion. From left to right.... Alex from California via Washington, Jillian from Aledo, TX via Norman, OK, Josh from Girard via Indianapolis, and Jonell from Plano via Lafayette. All together for the first time in human history.

As you can see, it was a pretty fun weekend, we did a lot of other fun stuff running around St. Louis. We were able to visit Champaign friends, go to Union Station and see the most influential evangelical in America, Rick Warren, speak. (Ask me about that later, there's too much to go into here, but overall it was exactly what I expected, unimpressive.) The rest of the weekend wound into a New Years celebration in Champaign with Blake Johnson, his new lady friend Lydia, and a couple of her college roommates. It was a good time, and it was really needed for me, sometimes there's nothing like old (and new) friends to sooth a weary soul. Thanks guys!